Owing to their structure, gate-controlled semiconductor devices have parasitic capacitances which limit the switching speed of the semiconductor device in particular in very fast switching processes. In addition, the switching losses of the semiconductor device are co-determined to a great degree by these capacitances, because the parasitic capacitances have to be switched in each switching process together with the gate capacitance. Without the effect of the parasitic capacitances, the switching time of the semiconductor device would be determined by the transit time of the charge carriers through the gate-induced conduction channel, and the transit frequency would lie in the range of 10 GHz. In a real semiconductor device, however, the cut-off frequency is limited to values in the range of 10 MHz due to the parasitic capacitances.